swarming in the atmosphere? Let us take the first flower that falls in the way, for example, a daisy, or a rose, and we shall find there a multitude of insects. Is there the smallest spot in nature where living animals are not to be found? Nature has even produced animals in other animals, and made one animal to be as a world for other creatures to subsist in. The air, the juices of animals and plants, corrupted matter, excrements, smoke, dry wood, and even the hardest stones, in some measure, feed and serve to lodge living creatures. The sea seems an element made up of animals. That light observed upon it in summer nights, is owing to innumerable little shining worms, whose parts, when divided from the body and corrupted, still shine, as the worm itself did when alive. Whole swarms of animalculæ, which the eye cannot reckon, flutter and sport in the rays of the sun. All these innumerable animals of our little globe are infinitely diversified in their form, their organs, their faculties, and motions. Undertake, O man! to name all these animals, to express by numbers the individuals of one single species; to calculate how many flies, worms, birds, &c. there are! How could you do it? Their number is unknown, and if it were not so, it would be impossible to express it by cyphers. Here we have a fine subject for admiration, in reflecting on the infinite power of our Creator. He alone produced, he alone preserves and supports this immense multitude of creatures. Consider how much food such a number of animals require. If they only lived at each others expence, if they destroyed one another, nature would present us with nothing but a frightful scene of murder and slaughter. But happily there are not many carnivorous animals; and they are very useful in devouring carcases, and by that means means guarding us from infection, as well as in preserving a certain balance, by preventing any species from multiplying too fast. Besides this, the Creator has properly designed the vegetable kingdom for the food of animals; and he has assigned, to almost each species of beasts, a particular kind of plant. In order that all sorts of animals should have food in proportion to their number, he has ordained that they should live in different countries of the earth. How exactly has he even measured the ground! One single tree is larger than thousands of plants; yet it fills up no more space on the surface of the earth, than a few feet square, and a multitude of quadrupeds, birds, and insects, find their food there, and lodge in it. What care also has the Creator shewn, in surrounding all animals with a fluid matter adapted to their different natures. Two sorts of seas are destined for them; one of water, and one of air. All living creatures are in one or other of these two elements, except the small number which can live in either. The bottom of these two seas is the habitation of a part of those animals; such as are, in the upper sea, the reptiles, and most of the quadrupeds; and in the lower sea, the zoophites, the shell-fish, corals, oysters, &c. Others have the power of rising and descending as they please in their element, as the birds and insects do in the air, and as the whales and most other fish do in the water. And the Atheist dares to say in his heart, that there is no God! Senseless man : "Go and ask "the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the "fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee; or "speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee, and "the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. "Who *Who knoweth not in all these, that the hand "of the Lord hath wrought this?" JUNE X. IMMENSITY OF THE FIRMAMENT. COME, O man, and contemplate the firma ment! behold that multitude of lights which shine and illumine your nights. Try to count them ; but thy weak sight is unable to do it; and thine eyes are lost in the numberless stars. Well, then, take thy telescope, and double thy sight. What dost thou now see? To the first million new millions of worlds are added. Continue these observations, and undertake to count the stars thou hast discovered. Thy ideas are confounded. Thou seest that it is beyond the power of numbers to express such immense multitudes. It is true, that for many ages past, mankind have tried to find out the number of the stars; but the discoveries made in the heavens since the invention of telescopes, plainly prove, that no man can ascertain the number of celestial bodies. One of the most ancient astronomers reckoned but one thousand and twenty-six; the catalogue was afterwards increased to one thousand and eighty-eight stars. But the observations made since, by the assistance of telescopes, have convinced mankind, that the human sight cannot discover all the celestial bodies. Our instruments have informed us, that the long, white, and luminous tract, which fills a large part of the sky, called the Milky Way, is composed of a multitude of stars. We know even that, in places where we saw with the naked eye but one single VOL. II. I single star, the telescopes have since discovered many more to us. By their means, we distinguish, in two constellations alone, twice as many stars as we reckoned in the whole sky. How much has this of course enlarged our ideas in respect to the greatness of the universe! But if the discoveries already made have so increased our admiration of the immensity of the Divine Power, it will rise still higher when we reflect how vast these bodies must be, which, notwithstanding their prodigious distance from us, are many of them visible to the naked sight. Exact calculations, which may be depended on, inform us that a cannon ball would take more than seven hundred thousand years to reach from hence to the nearest of the fixed stars; and yet the greatest astronomers agree, that these numbers are not sufficient to express even the apparent distance of a fixed Some of these globes appear to us to be the largest, because they are the nearest to us: They are, on that account, called stars of the first magnitude. Those nearest to them are called stars of the second magnitude, because being much farther from us they appear smaller. They must be at as great a distance from the former, as the latter are from us. Those of the third magnitude must be three; those of the fourth, four times farther from us than the first, &c. Supposing there were but twenty of these, it would follow, that the diameter of the whole universe, if there were only twenty classes of stars, would be so great, that a cannon ball could not go through it in twenty-four millions of years. star. King of heaven! Sovereign Ruler of the stars! Father of spirits and of men! O that my ideas were vast and sublime as the expanse of the heavens, that I might worthily meditate upon thy greatness greatness! That I might raise them even to these innumerable worlds, where thou displayest thy magnificence still more than on this earthly globe! That as I now pass from flower to flower, I might go from star to star, till I arrived at the august sanctuary where thou sittest on the throne of thy glory! But my desires are vain, as long as I am a sojourner upon earth. I shall not know the wonders of the celestial globes, till my soul is delivered from the incumbrance of this gross body. In the mean time, as long as I live in this world, I will raise my voice, and sing thy praise. JUNE XI. SINGULARITIES IN THE VEGETABLE THE variety of animals is so great, that it appears at first difficult to find connection between them and plants. Some beasts live only in water; others only on land, or in the air; some which can live in either or both equally. But it may be said literally, that it is the same in respect to vegetables. There are plants which only live in the ground; others that only grow in water; others that can bear no moisture; others, still, which live equally in land or water: There are even some that live in the air. There is in the island of Japan a tree, which, contrary to the nature of all other plants which require moisture, cannot bear it. As soon as it is wet, it withers, and the only way to save it from dying, is to cut it down to the root, to dry it in the sun, and afterwards plant it in a dry and sandy soil. It is known, that a sort of mushroom, moss, and other little plants, swim in the air: But a more extraordi |